Surrey Pilot Shares Unforgettable Concorde Memories on 50th Anniversary

A Surrey pilot who became the youngest person to fly a Concorde says he is still fascinated by the supersonic plane, 50 years after its first commercial flight. Concorde first flew passengers from London Heathrow on 21 January 1976 and ran for nearly 30 years before retiring in 2003. Mike Bannister, who flew Concorde's last commercial journey, said that while it was sad the plane had to be retired, he was excited for the next generation of supersonic travel. Bannister, from Staines, said: "It's fascinating to think that Concorde was designed in the late 1950s and early 1960s and there's still nothing that can do all the things it could all that time ago." Speaking at Brooklands Museum, where one of the planes is still kept, Bannister added: "Most of our customers were business people or world leaders, but we really enjoyed carrying those people who were doing the trip of a lifetime because they were the ones who got really excited. "Some passengers travelled so frequently that they would become friends of the crew. It was rather like a sophisticated club in the air." After its first flights in 1976, Concorde began its signature route from London Heathrow to JFK airport in New York in November 1977. Concorde flew nearly 50,000 times with more than 2.5 million passengers while in service with British Airways, according to the airline.